Death rate drops as B.C. loggers embrace safe practices on the job

When Otto Schulte, coastal woodlands vice-president for International Forest Products, boarded a float plane last week for a trip from Nanaimo to Vancouver, he was the only passenger wearing a flotation device.

The life-vest attracted attention among the passengers, and the pilot told him to take it off.

“I had two choices to make: Either I am wearing it, or I am not flying in that plane,” Schulte said in a later interview.

He wore the vest, waiting until the pilot was aboard and had his back turned before putting it on.

A decade ago, Schulte would not have worn that vest. Now, it’s a binding company rule. If you want to work at Interfor, you follow the safety rules.

Wearing life-jackets in float planes is one small indicator that reflects how safe practices are becoming the new standard in the B.C. forest industry, regularly going well beyond federal and provincial regulations.

The focus on safety has paid off, cutting down the number of deaths and accidents in B.C. forests. In 2010, six workers died in B.C.’s forests for the second consecutive year. It’s still nothing to be proud of, but compared to 43 deaths in 2005, and an average of 22 in the years before that, it’s a clear indicator of a change for the better in the way people work in the woods.

The horrendous number of deaths in 2005 prompted a public outcry, and forced both government agencies and companies to reassess the approach to safety. Safe practices were often near the bottom of priority lists six years ago. Now, companies want documented proof that their contractors and employees are operating safely.

There’s no single reason behind the change. Some say executives fear being held legally accountable for deaths on their watch. Others say it’s publicity about logger deaths or safety certification programs developed by WorkSafeBC and the B.C. Forest Safety Council. A smaller workforce is a factor. Regardless, there’s been a change in the woods that’s now showing up in statistics.

Schulte said because much of the logger workforce is transient, changing the culture is bigger than any single company. It took an industry-wide response. Each forest company faced a different moment of truth when safety became more than a slogan. At Interfor, the need for change hit when safety coordinator Dal Shemko was killed in a 2002 accident. It was a wake-up call. Then came 2005, when in one year alone, seven Interfor employees died.

“Whatever we were doing at that time wasn’t enough,” Interfor CEO Duncan Davies said in an interview.

The company brought in new rules and regulations, like the requirement to wear life-jackets on flights over water, and focused on changing the awareness of safety among its employees. Contractors and employees needed to be certified. A counsellor and a safety specialist were brought in to identify the factors behind the unsafe work practices. Safety audits were held. All managers understood Davies wanted results: “Either you are going to operate in a safe fashion or you are not going to work for us,” he said.

Interfor vice-president and chief forester Ric Slaco said it took commitment by Davies, and Interfor’s board of directors, to initiate a new corporate direction that emphasized safety.

“It really wasn’t any one thing by itself; it’s a whole attitude within the company that accidents are preventable,” Slaco said in an interview. “What really changed our company’s performance was the attitude at the top.

“We had to do better; we had to find ways to ensure that the people working for us, our staff and our contractors, were coming home at night having worked safely during the day.”

That’s when the company began delving into the culture of risk-taking that permeated logging. From there, programs on making accidents preventable were developed.

Schulte believes the initiatives launched by most forest companies, not just Interfor, have led to a fundamental transformation in logger culture. He should know. A lifelong logger, he was a part of that culture.

“It was a culture of risk-taking. I can’t explain it any other way.”

Interfor’s safety consultant found that it was the older, seasoned workers or those with less than two years experience who were getting killed. The lack of experience is easy to understand. But why were older workers who knew better, taking risks?

“I think it’s because if you do one thing too many times, you become complacent. I was brought into the industry when it was a culture of risk-taking. You are born into it. It’s acceptable. You learn to measure risk but you take more risk than you should.”

Schulte, who lives in the rural community of Black Creek north of Courtenay, has three sons in the logging industry. He has noticed they do not share that culture.

“My three boys have entered the sector in a completely different culture where risk-taking is no longer acceptable. We openly discuss that. As both an industry leader and a father, I feel very good about that.”

There’s no single event that brought down the death rate, said Reynold Hert, president of the B.C. Forest Safety Council, an agency formed in 2004 to specifically address what loggers called the dirty little secret: The industry killed people. Everybody, from fallers to CEOs, had accepted that as part of a dangerous job.

“People are now coming to the belief that nobody needs to get hurt seriously to do this job, and that it’s a mark of professionalism to do this job without injury,” Hert said.

The industry is much smaller. WorkSafeBC estimates employment has fallen by 40 per cent since 2005, obviously a factor in the declining injury toll.

But the smaller workforce is seeing a lower rate of injury. The number of injuries per hundred person-years of employment is down 31 per cent since 2005.

“The forest industry used to be three times the provincial average severe injury rate; it is now two times. It’s still high but now it’s lower than some of the other industrial groups,” said Hert.

Hert attributes much of the change to the United Steelworkers union, which took over the old IWA in 2004. The union had successfully lobbied for the so-called Westray amendment to the Criminal Code, under which executives could be held criminally liable if their company was shown to be demonstrating a reckless disregard for safety. Steelworkers have launched a private prosecution in B.C. against Weyerhaeuser over a 2004 worker death.

“Quite frankly, the change from IWA to Steelworkers was a key point where a fresh perspective came in; there was a new look and people going, ‘How can this be?’”

Non-union fallers also became vocal about the number of them being killed.

“All of a sudden it wasn’t acceptable any more for people to get killed. It became headlines,” said Ron Corbeil, health and safety coordinator for the Steelworkers. He said news stories, led by The Vancouver Sun, had a strong impact.

“That started to change people’s psyche towards being a logger. It’s just not a price of doing business to injure and kill workers.”

WorkSafeBC warned companies they could be held liable for the deaths and injuries. It developed certification programs for workers. The Forest Safety Council introduced programs to certify companies based on safety and initiated audits. A forest safety ombudsman was appointed. Coroners’ inquests were held.

“I am sure CEOs said, ‘I don’t want to get called to one of those things,’ ” said Corbeil.

Hert, a former president of Western Forest Products, knows what it’s like to be at the top when people start dying.

“Getting word about a fatality is simply the worst kind of call you can get,” he said. “Not only have you lost a person, but it really says you have some real improvement areas needed in your business that you have missed to that point in time. You have got to ask yourself: How can this have happened in an organization that I am responsible for leading?”

But some logging contractors say the new emphasis on safety has a dollar cost that companies have been unwilling to pay.

At Winter Harbour on northern Vancouver Island, where W.D. Moore Logging cuts timber for licensee Western Forest Products, owner Graham Lasure is responsible for making sure all his employees follow the strict safety regime laid out in a series of manuals by WFP. There is no legal precedent identifying where corporate liability ends, and companies are making certain there’s a complete paper trail showing they have done everything necessary to ensure a safe workplace, he said.

Contractors now work under layers of safety regulations imposed by WorkSafeBC, the Forest Safety Council and individual companies, he said. He wonders whether the regulations promote safety or simply impose a rigid, prescriptive and costly paper burden.

“They have gone so far beyond due diligence that it’s very hard to get anything done. There’s a huge level of paperwork,” he said in an interview.

“I don’t think it’s the actual new rules that have changed things,” Lasure said. “It’s really a huge awareness campaign that changed it. It seems to be filtering down to the employee level where they really believe, ‘Yes, it is safety first.’”

ghamilton@vancouversun.com

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